


Love After Death

by icepixie



Category: Cupid (TV 1998)
Genre: Comedy, Gen, Ghosts, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 13:04:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5418143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icepixie/pseuds/icepixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even the dead need a little help in the romance department.  Trevor tries his hand at matching up two ghosts; Claire thinks he's even crazier than before.</p><p>
  <i>"Afraid of what we'll find?"</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"No, afraid of feeding into this delusional idea that ghosts exist, and especially that they can speak through a mass-produced children's toy."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Trevor put his fingers on the planchette and said, "Wait, I'm getting something."  He started moving it frantically around the board, calling out the letters as he went.  "C-L-A-I-R-E-I-S-A-P-A-R-T-Y-P-O-O-P-E-R."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love After Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tiriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiriel/gifts).



"Prepare yourself," Champ said to Claire as she approached the bar in Taggarty's on a quiet Wednesday afternoon. "He's up to something _really_ out there this time."

Claire raised her eyebrows. "Do I want to know?"

"I'm sure he'll tell you," Champ said, just as Trevor walked through the swinging doors that separated the kitchen from the bar.

His mouth was already running. "Did you know this place has a resident ghost? I had no idea! Linda only told me yesterday."

"Ghosts don't exist, Trevor," Claire said, automatic as breathing.

"Spoken like someone who's never been to the underworld. Good thing, too; Hades has a real stick up his..." He caught Claire's exasperated eye-roll. "Anyway, I saw this one. Blonde woman, eighteen or so, about your height—or she would be if her feet weren't cut off. Seems that after the house she lived in burned down in the Great Fire, they rebuilt with the foundation about a foot higher, so you can really only see her from the calves up. Not that you can see her calves or any other part of her body but her hands and face because she's wearing the longest, frilliest Victorian nightgown you have _ever_ seen, real mood-killer, but you get the idea. She was wandering through the kitchen looking for someone. Then she walked right through the wall and disappeared."

Claire had rapidly moved from curious to dismissive to worried as he spoke. "Trevor," she repeated. "They're a popular conceit in folklore, in _fiction_ , but ghosts aren't real. Whatever you saw, it came from your own imagination."

He shook his head. "Linda's seen her too."

Claire allowed herself to briefly imagine requiring Trevor to wear a sign reading "Please Do Not Feed the Delusion." It would never make it past an ethics board, but oh, it was nice to pretend.

"And before you say she told me about the ghost and I just cooked up a sighting based on the details she gave, I asked her about it after I saw said ghost."

Claire, who had been about to say exactly that, quickly switched tracks. "A lot of ghost sightings are caused by the very human reaction to low-frequency sounds, like the hum that might come from a refrigerator or an exhaust fan. Not only can they create feelings of anxiety or even dread, but a powerful enough generator in just the right space can even cause the human eyeball to resonate, causing someone to see things that aren't there that the brain interprets as a ghost."

Trevor crossed his arms. "And these imaginary sound creatures, Dr. Killjoy, do they speak? In complete sentences?"

"Well, ghost delusions aren't really my area of specialty—"

"Because this one told me all about how she's been stuck here for over a hundred years because she's never been able to connect with the ghost of the neighbor boy she was sweet on and tell him she loved him. They fought that night, and all she's wanted to do since then is make up with him."

"That's all very interesting, but—"

"I'm going to find his ghost and match them up."

"What?"

Champ rolled his eyes and grabbed a rag to wipe down the bar. "I told you it was crazier than usual."

"Trevor," Claire began, "this is really worrying. Believing you're Cupid and matchmaking with real people is one thing, one very bad thing, but seeing a ghost and wanting to find her true love, who doesn't exist because _ghosts aren't real_..."

"He lived across the street. Seems like the best place to start."

"In the dance studio?"

"Well, I'm hoping it's the dance studio and not the apartments above it because I've learned that people don't like strangers camping out in their homes." He spread his arms and raised his voice. "I used to be _welcomed_! Mortals used to pray for me to attend their parties and bless their homes."

"Now they just call the police," Champ piped up from down the bar.

"So what are you going to do?" Claire asked. "Barge in on a dance class and just sit there until the ghost of a young man shows himself?"

"Of course not. I've asked the owner to let me spend the night after my shift tomorrow."

"Oh, I suppose it's reassuring that you asked permission before doing something cr—" Claire paused. "Did you actually _receive_ permission when you asked?"

"Some people are open to love. Madame Anna is. I have to be there at nine thirty tomorrow night so she can lock up after her last class, and be out when her assistant's back to teach the first before-school class at six." He gave her a considering look. "First rule of ouija boards is never to use one alone."

She stood her ground. "I am not going to help you ghost hunt." Then her shoulders fell ever so slightly. She mentally waved goodbye to the night in with a new Kinsey Milhone novel and a bottle of chardonnay she had planned for the next evening. "I am coming with you, though."

Trevor, who had started to turn away when she said she wasn't going to help him find a ghost, did a double-take. "Am I the only one getting whiplash here?" he asked. From down the bar where he was now chopping lemons, Champ grunted. "Believe me, a mother like mine taught me it was a woman's prerogative to change her mind a dozen times an hour, but—"

"I'm going with you because according to the State of Illinois you're my responsibility, and I'm not going to let you do something stupid, or dangerous, in search of a ghost. Or if you do, I want to be there for damage control."

His expression was unimpressed. "Nice to know you care."

"Trevor, I am trying to keep you out of the hospital. Hunting ghosts so you can match up their lingering souls, or, or _whatever_ , is not going to look good to the competency board if they hear about it. Do you understand that?"

His mouth twisted as though he'd put one of the lemons Champ was slicing in it. Grudgingly, he said, "Yeah." He muttered something else about failures of imagination and bureaucracy next trying to interfere with private bodily functions that she pretended not to hear.

Eventually, Trevor got her the sandwich she'd actually come into the bar for, and Claire collected her purse and takeout box. "I guess I'll see you at nine thirty tomorrow night," she said. "Let's hope the dead can dance."

For the first time since she'd mentioned the board, Trevor seemed to come out of his funk, laughing genuinely. "That was a good one, Claire." Seeing her confusion, he stopped laughing, now seeming a bit disappointed. "Never mind."

* * *

The dance studio was creepy at night, with safety lights creating dim pools of light throughout the big room, mirrored on three sides with the entrance and the dressing rooms on the fourth. Trevor, naturally, had set up candles around the room, and his and Claire's reflections flickered eerily in the mirrors. She sat with her back against the one that faced the unmirrored wall, her head not quite brushing the lower of the two barres, and tried not to be creeped out.

To take her mind off the atmosphere, she dug through the bag of provisions Trevor had brought. It was dangerous to let him bring the food, but he'd just come off his shift at Taggarty's, which improved the chances of there being something edible in the bag. She was gratified to find two wrapped sandwiches, some chips, and..."Trevor, did you bring beer to this ghost stakeout?"

"Unlike Mulder and Scully, we aren't on duty when we're hunting ghosts," he said from several feet in front of her, where he was twirling around and waving his arms in what Claire hoped wasn't supposed to be a serious imitation of ballet steps. "Think there's a ballet about ghosts?"

"There's _Giselle_ ," she said. "When she kills herself, she joins the ghosts of other women who've been deceived by men they love. They haunt the forest and kill men who wander into it at night by dancing them to death. I did part of it for a recital once."

Trevor grinned, delighted now. "I knew it," he crowed. "The way you walked in here all furtive and cowed, looking around for the teacher...I bet you were a cute little ballerina."

"I only danced for a few years," she said. "Softball got more attractive when I was ten."

He flopped next to her. "Show me something."

"It's been years," she protested. "I don't really remember—"

"Sure you do! Come on, one little twirl."

It was going to be a long night. Since no ghosts were going to show up and distract them, they might as well amuse themselves. She stood up and toed off her shoes, then walked a few feet away from the mirrors. "Okay. I'll warn you that this isn't going to be..." She took a deep breath and moved her feet into what she hoped was fifth position. Then she spread her arms and threw herself into a pirouette, rising to her tiptoes on one leg while drawing the other up so her foot touched her knee as she spun around once.

Her foot came down quickly, automatically, to keep from falling over as she wobbled a bit from the spin, and she heard Trevor cheer. With a growing smile, she jumped forward in a jete that she knew wasn't terribly grande, but after more than twenty years, she'd take it. She turned around and did it again to the back, enjoying the feeling of flying, however briefly. Trevor clapped, and she didn't even mind the catcall he threw in.

Out of remembered steps, Claire pirouetted again, then again, and this time tried to see if she could keep it going beyond one revolution. She flung herself into it and even before she'd finished the first turn felt herself tipping to the side, flailing her arms in panic, sure she was going to bruise herself horribly, and then—

Trevor. Somehow he moved fast enough to catch her, and now his arms wrapped securely around her, one hand curling around her arm and the other splayed against her back, supporting almost her entire weight.

She tilted her head back. He was considerably taller than her from this position. He was also spinning disorientingly. She squinted, trying to focus, and said, "Good save."

"It was, wasn't it? You okay?"

"I'm a little dizzy, but I'll live."

His voice was soft. "Yeah."

He raised her up slowly and they separated. Claire returned to her spot against the mirror, whose coolness helped erase the warm outline of Trevor's hand that she could still feel on her back.

A few feet away, he started unpacking something from another bag. Several moments later, he sat back and spread his hands over the object on the floor in front of him. "Ready to contact the dead?"

The board, she saw, glowed in the dark. Apparently they'd made improvements to ouija boards since she'd tried it in Cindy Garcia's basement in sixth grade. Claire crossed her arms and leaned back against the mirror. "No."

"Afraid of what we'll find?"

"No, afraid of feeding into this delusional idea that ghosts exist, and especially that they can speak through a mass-produced children's toy."

Trevor put his fingers on the planchette and said, "Wait, I'm getting something." He started moving it frantically around the board, calling out the letters as he went. "C-L-A-I-R-E-I-S-A-P-A-R-T-Y-P-O-O-P-E-R."

"Very funny."

"Come on, help me out! Or take your negative energy into the dressing room and let me try and draw Henry out of whatever ghostly plane he's hiding on."

"Henry?"

"Yeah, that's his name. Henry Carpenter. Alice told me yesterday."

"Alice being..."

"The ghost at Taggarty's, yes."

"Of course." Claire scooted forward slightly, uncrossing her arms, leaning toward Trevor, and trying to make her body language as open as possible. "All this about ghosts and speaking to the dead...is this about your fear of death?"

"It's about getting a bead," he said blithely.

"We all die eventually, you know."

"Yes, you do." His voice hardened. "At some point, every one of you washes up on the shores of Acheron—not the Styx, that's another river; some wandering bard got it wrong and it's stuck ever since. And then Charon ferries you across, dips your face in the waters of Lethe, and then maybe you spend eternity being punished, maybe you lie around in fields all white with asphodel, depends on what you were up to before you kicked the bucket. And no matter what the Orphics believe, nobody comes back." He shrugged. "Some souls just get lost along the way. Alice and Henry did."

He sounded so sure. Not for the first time, Claire found herself almost believing he had firsthand experience of the mythological places and people he talked about so familiarly.

"Trust me, Claire. I've been around a while. I've seen millions of mortals die." He looked at her, finally, and his eyes were hollow enough to contain all the death he spoke of seeing.

 _Soldier,_ Claire thought, trying as always to deduce Trevor's past from his present, attempting to figure out the trauma that had created his delusion from the truth that glinted in his words like gold in a river. _Nurse. Retirement home aide._ She dutifully filed the possibilities away for further rumination, along with all the other hypotheses she'd had about his true identity, none of which had—as yet—panned out.

He smacked the planchette on the board. "Are you going to help or not? Because if not, I was serious about that dressing room thing."

If there was one thing Claire wasn't going to do, it was leave Trevor alone chasing ghosts. With a sigh, she scooted over to the board.

Trevor rustled up two battered metal folding chairs from a corner of the room, and they sat facing each other. Since there was no table, they had to hold the board on their laps, which required that they interleave their knees. "I think I see how this game got so popular with teenagers," she said.

Trevor smirked. "Right up there with the tunnel of love." They put their fingers on the planchette, and he called, "Henry Carpenter! Come out, come out, wherever you are. I command thee."

"Really?"

"You got a better way to call a ghost?"

"In the movies people usually ask the ghost to speak to them rather than order it."

"Oh." Trevor looked vaguely confused for a moment before he said, "Henry, got a message for you from faithful Alice. And I mean a hundred and twenty-six years of faithful, which is a lot of faith. Let's chat."

Nothing happened.

"Please? I got a bead riding on this, so any time you want to talk..."

The planchette moved, startling them both as the plastic scraped across the board. Even though she knew that one or both them was unconsciously moving it—or in Trevor's case, conscious movement couldn't be ruled out—Claire was still a little unnerved by the feeling of the plastic piece moving under her fingers.

It pointed to "N," and Trevor called out the letter. After a moment, it moved on to "O."

"'No'?" Trevor squawked. "'No'? First of all, that's right there at the top of the board. You really needed to spell it out? Second, what do you mean, 'No'? You and Alice have a bigger lovers' quarrel than she let on?"

The planchette moved to "T."

"'No-T.' You want coffee, not tea. No T-shirts. No...oh. 'Not.' Right, I get it." He frowned. "Whoa, wait a minute, this isn't the direction this needs to go. You're not what? Henry?" He looked up a the ceiling and glared. "Dad, if this is you playing a trick..."

"H," the planchette spelled. "E," "R," and "E" again.

"Not here," Trevor repeated, dully. Then he gave Claire a shrewd look. "You're doing this to prove ghosts aren't real."

She held up her hands defensively. "Believe it or not, Trevor, I was not consciously influencing the movement of a piece of plastic."

"Unconsciously?"

She pursed her lips. "Well, the most rational theory of how this game works is that the people playing unconsciously move the pointer."

"Do-over," he said, moving the planchette back to the middle of the board. "This time, no unconscious board-blocking. Open yourself to possibility." He lightly squeezed her knee between his thighs. " _All_ possibility, preferably. Who says teenagers get to have all the fun?"

"I'll remind you I have my knee close to a very sensitive part of the male anatomy," she said, and wiggled it to make her point. Trevor's grin disappeared.

"All right, Henry, let's try this again. Alice wants to find you. How do we get you two joined up for the trip to happily ever hereafter?"

The planchette moved more quickly this time. Again it spelled out "Not here."

"Claire!"

"I'm not purposely trying to ruin your ghost hunt!" She narrowed her eyes. "Maybe he's really not here. Maybe he didn't die in the fire. If Alice did, then how would she know?" She groaned. "And why am I talking about this like it's real possibility?"

"Because you might just be on to something." He looked back up at the ceiling. "Who are we talking to?"

The planchette moved again. "B-O-B," it spelled.

"Bob, any chance you're single?"

* * *

Two days after their fruitless session in the dance studio, Claire was at the bar in Taggarty's waiting for her soup when Trevor blew in the front door triumphantly clutching a sheaf of papers. "I've got it!" he crowed.

It occurred to Claire that she should really think about finding a new lunch spot.

"What do you think you have?" she asked as Champ set a bowl down in front of her.

Trevor spread the papers on the bar. "Henry Carpenter, born 1852. Died in 1875 in some kind of industrial accident. Buried in Oak Grove Cemetery."

"Okay," Claire said, "so he exists. Henry Carpenter's not that uncommon of a name. Could be anyone."

"He's Alice's Henry," Trevor insisted. "And we're going to go to his grave and contact him."

Claire felt her eyebrows shoot toward her hairline. "'We'?"

"We. You, me, and..." He looked at Champ. "You're an actor. You channel a playwright's ideas into a performance. I bet you could channel spirits."

If withering looks could actually wither, Trevor would be twitching on the floor with the force of his roommate's stare. "You want to hold a séance in Oak Grove?"

"Isn't that what I just said?"

"I was hoping I'd misheard."

"So." Trevor clapped his hands. "Saturday night good for everyone?"

"No," Claire and Champ replied as one.

Trevor actually looked surprised. "I have to have someone there to channel Henry. Ghosts can't take over the bodies of gods. We're too powerful. Our wills are too strong to be overruled."

Linda walked by just then, heading for the school fundraiser that was setting up in the far corner of the bar. A tray of freshly-baked brownies was in her hands. Trevor followed her as if hypnotized. "Oh my god, those smell amazing. Can I have one? Can I donate for one? I love brownies."

"Too strong to be overruled," Champ observed.

"Uh-huh," Claire agreed.

"You know if we don't go, he's just going to get some of the guys from the singles group to come by promising them beer. They're going to be drunk in a graveyard, trying to raise a ghost."

"Before I admit you're right, will you give me a minute to pretend it's not true?"

"Sure."

* * *

Saturday night found the three of them standing before a crooked gravestone that had the name Henry Carpenter, birth and death dates separated by a poignant twenty-three years, and the words "Beloved Son" chiseled into it. Except for their flashlights, the winking flashes of fireflies, and in the far distance the dim glow of streetlights, it was pitch black, which was only fitting seeing as it was almost three in the morning.

"This has to be at least eighteen kinds of wrong," Champ said.

"I'm counting closer to twenty-five," Claire replied.

Trevor ignored them both and placed a couple of lanterns around the grave, lit them, then took a seat right in front of the gravestone. He crossed his legs and put his flashlight on its end in the hollow of his lap, where it cast an eerie glow on his face. "Everyone join hands," he said.

With identical sighs, Claire and Champ joined him on the ground and joined hands to make a small circle of three.

"You sure you don't want that turban? I brought it with me just in case," Trevor said to Champ, who shook his head vehemently. "It'd really make you look the part..."

"I said no. Let's just get this over with, okay?"

"Channel away."

Champ took a deep breath and visibly shifted into actor mode. "Be you in nook or cranny, answer me," he intoned. "Be you in still-room or closet, answer me, be you behind the panel, above the stairs, beneath the eaves, waking or sleeping—answer me!"

At Claire and Trevor's blinking looks of bewilderment, he said, "What? I was in _Blithe Spirit_ in college."

"As Elvira?"

He glared. "I think that one's more in your line."

"Touche. Whatever, let's keep this séance moving. Got any other ghost calls up your sleeve?"

Champ rolled his eyes. "How about, Henry Carpenter, are you here?"

"Alice really, really wants to see you again."

A low moan whispered through the graveyard.

"Trevor?" Claire asked, her voice higher than she intended.

"No," he said, beginning to smile. "That's Henry."

Oak Grove was in an industrial part of the city, surrounded by factories and workshops which held hundreds of machines that might cause low-frequency vibrations, Claire reasoned. Either a machine itself was making that weird noise or a real sound on the edge of hearing was causing them to imagine things.

Champ's hand suddenly went rigid in hers. When she looked at him, his spine had stiffened, and he'd tilted his head back and shut his eyes. "Who speaks of Alice?" he asked, in a voice higher and somehow...younger than his own.

"We do!" Trevor said eagerly. "Alice is haunting my current place of employment, waiting for you to find her. She's been there since the fire."

"The fire," Champ said regretfully. "I escaped, but I couldn't save her."

"You two fought that night."

"Over when we should marry. It was silly; we would have made up in the morning. But the fire..."

"Yes, the fire. But you know what, you're both dead now, have been for a long time—uh, sorry if that's news to you—and there's no veil between life and death separating you."

"I so want to see her again."

Trevor grinned. "Alice? You coming?"

To her astonishment, Claire thought she saw a patch of mist come into being several feet away. If she squinted, it looked a lot like a young woman in a white nightgown with long blonde hair.

Nearby machines, she reminded herself as a chill crawled up her spine. Low-frequency sounds. Her mind was playing tricks on her.

A sound seemed to come from the misty shape. It sounded a lot like a woman's voice saying, "Henry."

"Alice..." Champ said, seemingly in reply. Suddenly his hand went limp in Claire's, and he slumped, his shoulders curving and his chin dipping toward his chest.

"Champ, are you okay?" she asked.

He turned his head slowly toward her and blinked a couple times. "Huh?"

Another cloud of mist had appeared beside the first. This one was taller. Wider. Manlier-looking. Dumbfounded, Claire watched as they drew closer together, so close they almost merged, and then faded away.

Maybe there were _several_ sources of low-frequency vibrations nearby. And marsh gas; had this cemetery been built near or over a swamp? They'd crossed a bridge just before arriving at the gates, so maybe something from the river...

"Off to the sweet hereafter," Trevor said, sounding satisfied. He released Claire's and Champ's hands to clap his own together. "A hundred years late, but they made it."

Claire was still concerned about Champ. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, sounding like himself again.

Without being asked, Trevor started collecting the lanterns and other paraphernalia they—mostly he—had brought, and then walked to Claire's car. Champ and Claire stood up, Claire watching to make sure he didn't wobble or faint. Once Trevor was out of sight, Champ stood up straighter, all traces of the weakness from before gone. Claire breathed a silent sigh of relief.

"I don't know about you, but I'm beat," he said.

"It's been a while since I stayed up this late." She gave him another careful look. "You were acting during that whole...thing, right?"

"Of course."

His gaze, she noticed, did not meet her own.

They started walking toward the car. "I never asked," Claire said. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

Crickets chirped in the pause that followed. Finally he said, "I was sixteen when my grandfather died. He had a heart attack in his house; it was very sudden. I was doing homework in my room the night he died, and I remember hearing him call my name. I could swear he was right there in the room with me, but when I turned around, there was no one there. But I felt like I felt when I spent time with him—safe and warm and loved. We got the call from my uncle a few minutes later."

Claire pursed her lips, feeling oddly chastened. "Here I thought that was a yes or no question," she said lightly.

"There's a lot about the world we don't understand. Lots we haven't discovered. Maybe ghosts, or what we think are ghosts, are just part of that."

Ghosts, love, the mind of one Trevor Hale. So many things in the world required so much more study. "Maybe so."

"Come on!" Trevor called from the car. "Let's go celebrate Alice and Henry's reunion!"

* * *

As dawn was breaking, Trevor returned to his bedroom for the first time that night. He stared up at the beads strung from one wall to the other over his bed and counted.

A smile crossed his face.


End file.
